I don’t know how to say this, or to start writing here. This whole story seems a little fantastical, but I think I need help. I’m not sure what’s happening to them, or where they are right now. I don’t know. I don’t know!
Okay. . . Calm down. No need to get so overly anxious quite yet.
It all started a few weeks ago when Amazon trucks began to display a strange new warning: “Contents May Cause Happiness”.
I didn’t think much of it at the time, why would I? Just another coorperate gimmick, right?
That was until a package with the same warning, this time emblazened in red rather than the characteristic blue appeared on my doorstep. I left it there. Didn’t wanna touch the thing. Didn’t think about what else could happen. I know it was stupid. It was stupid of me.
I came home the next day from work, the package sat open in my kitchen, my boys huddled around it, seemingly entranced by it. How long they had been sitting like that, I’d rather not know. I convinced them to close the box, with a little fight, and moved it to a corner. I was contemplating looking but.. how could I?
Over the next few days, I tried my hardest to forget about the strange incident. I had priorities other than intruige in the night. My boys, my job, and my safety. I tried so hard to forget. How foolish was I?
It was about a week later when they showed the first signs of something wrong. They began to wear an effervescent smile reguardless of the circumstance. I was happy for it, too, at first. It became all too quickly apparent that something was wrong when my oldest fell from his bike at the park – and didn’t even flinch. He just.. smiled.
Soon after that I began to suspect that godforsaken package had done something. As the days went on, they began to sparkle lightly, sometimes even seeming to emenate some of the same fine golden glitter I had cleaned up without a second thought on that fateful day.
It had to have been another week before I began to panic about them. Whatever it was that was… infecting them. It had spread to their eyes somehow. I couldn’t see the same light in them anymore! I couldn’t see them. I. All that was left was an erie yellow glow. Whatever had made them human once was now gone. Despite my best efforts to convince myself otherwise, the glitter had also grown. It was everywhere. In every crevace, in every wall. I tried my hardest to look past it, to not fall to whatever it was.
I told myself a million different things to make it okay. To rationalize this unnatural strangeness. It would be okay. We would make it through this as a family. Whatever this was, my boys would fight it. There would be treatment. A way out. No matter what I told myself though, this grave disease was entering it’s final stages now. They didn’t even act human anymore. They just mumbled and murmured about something I couldn’t quite understand. Some ancient language. The only phrase they wanted me to hear was “Happiness, Return.”
Then, I woke up today. I’ve been feeling so calm in the mist of this – I’m not even sure how. I thought writing this post would make me break down, but it hasn’t. Today they were gone, piles of glitter in their bed. In a moment of grief I stayed in that room. I don’t know if they’re gone from here or gone.
All I know is how Happy I’m beginning to feel.